Archive for May, 2010

Remember BYD's Snaptop concept, the Snapdragon-powered tablet with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard hiding in the rear panel? It looks like someone at Taiji Electronics has been paying attention; they're apparently bringing along their new slate to Computex 2010, a VIA C7 1.2GHz based Windows 7 tablet, and it stores a Bluetooth keyboard in the back section complete with a kick-stand.

Details on a new Samsung Android smartphone, the Samsung i897, have leaked to AndroidGuys, and it looks to be headed to AT&T in the not too distant future. Still, while you'd assume that a new Samsung phone would be a source of glee for the company's fans, those who have already bought into Android are too busy being livid about Samsung's upgrade intentions for earlier models.

With international outlets of Apple's iBookstore fast filling up with premium titles, amateur authors are probably wondering how they can get their works into the system too. Apple has added book submissions to iTunes Connect, their system whereby independent musicians could add A/V content to the iTunes store, though it's not quite as straightforward as uploading a PDF and raking in the ebook revenue.

Nokia N8 demo videos are in short supply, so we'll take anything we can get in the run-up to the smartphone's release. Nokia Conversations have sat down senior product manager Chris Bennetts and got him to walk through the N8's UI, messaging app, browser and maps. If there's anything we can take away it's that the Symbian^3 interface looks to be more a case of minor evolutionary tweaks rather than the groundbreaking revolution we were hoping for.

A new patent application from Sony suggests the company might be the latest to jump on the dual-display ereader bandwagon. Unlike the nook and Spring Design Alex, however, the Sony design would incorporate its two screens into a foldable housing that could be used in either book orientation or, rotated 90-degrees, in a notebook orientation.

Analyst predictions - like any other - should generally be taken with a pinch of salt (the Steve Ballmer at WWDC 2010 speculation is good evidence of quite how much sodium is necessary), but it seems someone at Gartner has been seriously mistaken in their counting. They're quoted as claiming under 100,000 Nokia N900 units were sold in its first five months on the market; however, a source we spoke to at Nokia today told us that in fact the Finnish company sold "well in excess of 100,000" N900 handsets in the first five weeks.

With Computex 2010 kicking off next week, Gigabyte have spilled the beans on some of what we can expect to see. Among the motherboards - catering both for Intel and AMD's newest hexacore processors - there's a new GV-R587SO-1GD graphics card based on ATI's Radeon HD 5870 GPU. However, we're most interested in the Gigabyte M1125, spotted in a thumbnail on Gigabyte's site and detailed over at SemiAccurate, an 11.6-inch convertible touchscreen notebook packing a processor from Intel's Core i-Series.

News of a new Acer netbook has emerged, the Acer Aspire One 533, and it looks to be an Intel Atom version of the AMD-powered Aspire One 522. According to macles' sources, the chrome-lashed AO533 has a choice of Atom N455 and N475 processors together with DDR3 memory support, helping eke out battery life to an estimated 10hrs.

It's been a long time since we first saw the RAmos W7 Android MID, but the distinctive chromed device is finally shipping. Based around a 4.8-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, a 600MHz Rockchip RK2808 processor and 8GB of storage, the really surprising part is the price: the W7 is apparently on sale in China for just 999 Yuan ($146).

Sling Media have released a brief demo of their new SlingPlayer Android client, but we fancied a better play and so managed to grab a copy of the beta for ourselves. Loaded up on a Nexus One, the control process was just as straightforward on the Google phone's 3.7-inch display as it looks on the EVO 4G's 4.3-inch screen; picture quality is decent, and while there are a lot of on-screen controls - since they're basically recreating your full set-top box remote in the mobile client - after a little use it's all reasonably familiar. More first impressions - and a demo video - after the cut.